JavaFX session

Java FX

Few days ago I have attended a session in our faculty held under the auspices of OSUM Club, given by the Sun Campus Ambassador (Ahmad Saeed), about the Java FX. It is one of the products of sun microsystems, it is mainly used the GUI building, and it has a lot of features, and after the session while searching for JavaFX features I found some brief points on wikipedia which are that JavaFX is:

Common profile. JavaFX is based on the concept of a “Common profile” that is intended to span across all devices supported by JavaFX. This approach makes it possible for developers to use common programming model while building an application targeted for both desktop and mobile devices and to share much of the code, graphics assets and content between desktop and mobile versions. To address the need for tuning applications for the needs of specific class of devices, the JavaFX 1.1 platform includes API’s that are desktop or mobile-specific. For example JavaFX Desktop profile includes SWING and advanced visual effects.

Drag-to-Install. From the point of view of the end user “Drag-to-Install” allows them to drag a JavaFX widget or application residing in a website within the browser window and drop it onto their desktop. The application will not lose its state or context even after the browser is closed. Application can also be re-launched by clicking on a shortcut that gets automatically created on the user’s desktop. This behavior is enabled out-of-the-box by the Java applet mechanism and is leveraged by JavaFX from the underlaying Java layer. Sun touts “Drag-to-Install” as opening up of a new distribution model and allowing developers to “break away from the browser”.

Integrating graphics created with third-party tools. JavaFX includes a set of plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator that enable advanced graphics to be integrated directly into JavaFX applications. The plug-ins generate JavaFX Script code that preserves layers and structure of the graphics. Developers can then easily add animation or effects to the static graphics imported. There is also an SVG graphics converter tool (a.k.a. Media Factory) that allows for importing graphics and previewing assets after the conversion to JavaFX format.

Finally, I’m still in the 1st year in my department and we didn’t take any GUI project till now, so next year we will start to make the GUI projects, so I will decide to work with the JavaFX after the first project rather than working with SWT or SWING or any thing else which will waste our time, and we can save it using JavaFX…

Really it is a very nice topic and it desreve to work on it…